THE PRE-HISTORIC RACE.
pg. 159
DODDRIDGE, in his "Notes on the
Settlement of Western Pennsylvania and Virginia," etc.,
says, touching the earth forts, mounds, grave-yards,
stone-hatchets, and other evidences of a race preceding the
Indians.
"Most writers represent these as peculiar to America;
but the fact is, they are also in Europe and Asia.
Large groups of mounds are met with in many places between
Moscow and St. Petersburgh), in Russia. When the
people of that country are asked if they have any tradition
concerning them, they answer in the negative. They
suppose they are the graves of men slain in battle, but when
or by whom constructed they have no knowledge. Nearly
all the mounds which have been opened in Asia and America
have been found to contain more or less charcoal and
calcined bones. Some have thought that these mounds
were used for altars for sacrifice, the offerings being the
prisoners taken in battle. The great antiquity of
these relics can not be questioned. A curious
fact is that they are not found in any great numbers along
the shores of the main oceans. This circumstance goes
to show that those by whom they were made were not in the
practice of navigating the great seas. That they contain
nothing with even hieroglyphics is evidence of a high
antiquity. An-
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other evidence of the great age of these rude remains of
antiquity is that there is not even a regular traditionary
account of their origin."
Doddridge gives reasons at length for rejecting the
idea that there was any considerable degree of civilization
among the people making them. He is inclined to think
they were of Asiatic origin, though not holding the idea
that they were "the lost tribes of Israel." He is not
so wild as some in his estimates of their numbers, wanting
something more than one swallow to make a summer, and not
familiar with or disposed to accept the processes of the
modern anti-biblical "scientists," who made so much out of
that tremendous "sell," the Cardiff giant, to disparage the
scriptural account of man.
ANCIENT BURIAL GROUNDS.
" In the county of
Coshocton, as we pass west on the Pan-Handle railroad, three
miles or thereabouts from the county-seat, is seen to the
right a large plain in the river bend of several hundred
acres, and on the east bank of the river, a few hundred
yards distant, a large mound, forty feet high, with trees
thereon. In its vicinity, Zeisberger settled Lichtenau,
in 1776, and he was attracted to the spot from the numerous
evidences of an ancient race having been buried there, more
civilized than the Indians of his day. The
missionaries have left but meager details of what they there
found, but enough to clearly prove that its inhabitants
understood the use of the ax, the making of pottery, and
division of areas of land in squares, etc. In a large
grave yard, which covered many acres, human bones or
skeletons were found, less in stature than the average
Indian by a foot and a half. They were regularly
buried in rows, heads west and feet east, as indicated by
the enameled teeth in preservation, so that the disembodied
spirits, on coming out of the graves, would first see the
rising sun, and make their proper devotional gestures to
their great Spirit or God. From approximate
measurement this grave-yard contained ten acres, and has
long since been plowed up and turned
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into corn-fields. The race of beings buried there
averaged four feet in height, judging from the size of the
graves and layers of ashes. Estimating that twenty
bodies could be buried in a square rod, this human
sepulcher, if full, would have contained over thirty
thousand bodies, and the ordinary time required to fill such
a grave-yard would not be less than five hundred years in a
city the size of Coshocton of the present day, assuming that
the generations averaged thirty-three years of life.
One skeleton dug up from this grave-yard is said to have
measured five and one-half feet, and the skull to have been
perforated by a bullet. The body had been dismembered,
and iron nails and a decayed piece of oak were found in the
grave.
"On the farm of a Mr. Long, about fifteen miles
southwest of St. Louis, was found, many years ago, an
ancient burying-ground, containing a vast number of small
graves, indicating that the country around had once been the
seat of a great population of human beings of less than
ordinary size, similar in every respect to those found near
Coshocton. But, on opening the graves, they found the
skeletons deposited in stone coffins, while those at
Coshocton bore evidence of having been buried in wooden
coffins. After opening many of the graves, all having
in them skeletons of a pigmy race, they at length found one,
as at Coshocton, denoting a full-developed, large-sized man,
except in length, the legs having been cut off at the knees
and placed alongside the thighbones. From this fact
many scientific men conjectured that there must have been a
custom among the inhabitants of separating the bones of' the
body before burial, and that accounted for the small size of
the graves. The skeletons, however, were reduced to white
chalky ashes, and therefore it was impossible to determine
whether such a custom existed or not.
"A custom is said to have existed among certain tribes
of the western Indians to keep their dead unburied until the
flesh separated from the bones; and when the bones became
clean and white, they were buried in small coffins.
The Nanticoke Indians of Maryland had a custom of exhuming
their dead after some months of burial, cutting off
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from the bones all the flesh and burning it, then drying and
wrapping the bones in clean cloths, and reburying them; and,
whenever the tribe removed to new hunting-grounds, the bones
of their dead were taken along. It is known that this
tribe removed to Western Pennsylvania, and portions of them
came to the Muskingum valley with the Shawanese.
Zeisberger had two Nanticoke converts at Schoenbrunn, and
one of whom (named Samuel Nanticoke) affirmed—as
tradition goes—that this pigmy grave-yard at Lichtenau was
their burying-ground, and contained the bones of their
ancestors, carried from one place to another for many
generations, and found a final resting place in these
valleys, when their posterity became too weak, from the
wastage of war, to remove them elsewhere."—Mitchener's
Ohio Annals.
When the Walhonding canal was being built, a number of
skeletons in the sitting posture were unearthed. On
the Powelson place, just east of the town of
Coshocton, a skeleton was dug up, having upon the head a
curious shaped metallic cap or earthen-ware vase. It
was forwarded to the Academy of Natural Sciences in
Philadelphia, by Rev. Wm. E. Hunt, in 1869.
MEANING OF THE NAMES
MUSKINGUM, TUSCARAWAS, AND WALHONDING.
The Tuscarawas
river was long embraced with the Muskingum river, as we now
call it, under the one designation - the Muskingum extending
from Marietta to the headwaters in Summit county.
Afterward the Tuscarawas was called the "Little Muskingum."
The best accredited meaning of the name Muskingum is "Elk's
Eye" - the emblem of placid, quiet beauty.
Tuscarawas, according to Heckewelder (as good authority
as any in these things), means "Old Town," the oldest Indian
town in South-eastern Ohio being on it near the present
Bolivar.
The Walhonding is, with unvarying testimony, said to
mean "The White Woman."
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PROSE LEGEND OF THE
WALHONDING.
Christopher
Gist, when looking uplands for George
Washington's Virginia Land Company, was at "White
Woman's Town," Jan. 14, 1751. He says the town (it
stood near the junction of Killbuck and White Woman creeks)
was so called from the fact that the ruling spirit in it was
a white woman, who had been taken captive in New England,
when she was not above ten years of age, by the French
Indians, and had subsequently become the wife of "Eagle
Feather." She is reported as having been one of the
"strong-minded " of her day, and " wore the leggins."
She had several children, and was even outstripping the
Indian in Indian qualities. Her name was Mary
Harris. According to this story, the river was
named from the town. Those who prefer this account to
the more poetic, and perhaps equally truthful, one given in
the chapter of this work entitled " Indian Occupancy," can
do so without hurting the feelings of the writer of the
book, who has not talent nor time to settle conflicting
Indian legends.
HECKEWELDER'S GREAT
RIDE.
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A TEMPERANCE CRUSADE AMONG THE INDIANS.
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the snow, as Jones states in his journal, some four to five
feet deep." - Mitchener's Ohio Annals.
THE GNADENHUTTEN MASSACRE.
Although
this was not an event taking place in Coshocton county, yet
had to do with it, and the occurrence bore important
relations to the Indians whose cherished seat was once in
Coshocton county, and to the settlement of the county, a
brief account is here given.
1781, the Moravian Indians were required to abandon the
Tuscarawas valley mission stations and repair to Detroit.
Amid the rigors of the winter they were taken to Sandusky
and there held for a time. A scarcity of provisions
was, however, soon felt in the new location, and in
February, 1782, about a hundred and fifty of the Indians
returned from the Sandusky region to the Tuscarawas region
to get supplies of corn which had been raised the season
before, and left in the field unhusked. While they
were husking and gathering the com they took up their
residence again in Gnadenhutten and Salem.
Meanwhile the settlers in Western Pennsylvania were
experiencing some great outrages at the hands of some red
skins. A band had attacked the home of a man named
Wallace, murdered his wife and five children, impaling
one of the children with its face toward the settlements and
its belly toward the Indian country, and had carried off'
John Carpenter as a prisoner. In the latter
part of 1781, the militia of the frontier came to a
determination to break up the Moravian villages on the
Tuscarawas. For this purpose, a detachment of men,
under the command of Colonel Williamson,
avowing only the determination to make the Indians move
further away or taking them prisoners to Fort Pitt.
When they reached Gnadenhutten they found but few Indians,
the removal of most of them to Sandusky having already been
effected. A few were captured and taken to Fort Pitt
and delivered to the commandant there, who, after a short
detention, sent them home again. This procedure
greatly displeased the settlers, who were demand
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DESCRIPTION OF THE HUBNTING-SHIRT.
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HOW TO RAISE A LARGE FAMILY
INDIAN STORIES.
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BACKWOODS SPORTS.
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